The International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to announce the launch ofResearch Paper No: 08 on the theme of Post War Reconciliation titled, Is Peace a Hostage of the Military Victory? Dilemmas of Reconciliation, Ethnic Cohesion and Peace-Building by Gamini Keerawella.

Having militarily defeated the LTTE, Sri Lanka presently stands at a critical historical juncture in its endeavour to attain a sustainable peace. The peace and stability of post-war Sri Lanka depends on the ability of key stakeholders in peace to utilise the new political space opened up at the end of the war to systematically address the root causes that generated and sustained ethnic conflict and violence. The paper proposes to reconfigure the post-war peace-building from a human rather than physical infrastructure-focused approach.The Archimedean screw of the entire post-conflict peacebuilding is the ability of the government to bring the core issues of political reform into the forefront of post-conflict peace-building in order to offer a durable solution to the ethnic problem. The paper argues that the end of the civil war does not conclude an ethno-political conflict; rather it re-defines the conflict in conditions of no-war, thereby necessitating new strategies for post-civil war peace-building and reconciliation. By redefining the conditions of the ethno-political conflict in a no-war context, the military defeat of the LTTE has opened a new historical space to find a durable solution to the ethno-political conflict but simultaneously created many constraints on that path in the context of post-war ‘triumphalism’ and the majoritarian mindset of the ethno-political clientele of the regime.